Phablets for the Shop Floor

Typically, consumer products manufacturers have been conservative in the adoption of mobile technology on the shop floor. Some of the key factors in have been the high price of industrial handheld scanners and barcode readers that can cope with the environment and not be attractive enough to “walk home” from the plant with the employees.

I want to challenge this status quo now that the price and capability of consumer electronics has hit an inflection point where it just makes good sense to consider other options. Today Apple iPods, Amazon Kindle Fire, Google Nexus 7 and the new range of Phablets (mobile phone the size of a small tablet) are only a couple of hundred dollars each as opposed to the thousands charged for a single scanner. They have built in cameras, are Wi-Fi enabled, have plenty of available scanning apps for barcode and QR codes and even when you buy a good case to protect them they still are a fraction of the price of the industrial options.

As for the “walking home” issue, today you can remotely track location of devices outside the factory so where the asset goes, the owner will follow.

Also, we are seeing more mobile device-to-device capability emerging, so rather than having to link back to a server you can communicate locally. Using Bluetooth, these devices can exchange data with smart sensors and capture information that can be uploaded to the server at a later time. It’s like how today we have moved away from music docking stations at home to Bluetooth speakers that can communicate with multiple devices ( just bought one—very, very cool!!)

My premonition is the manufacturers of industrial scanners will eventually become software application providers to the cheaper consumer electronics, the same way satellite navigation companies have adapted to smartphone competition by providing their applications to the mass market of devices.

So what do you think? Is our industry ready to change the status quo? Are you one of the companies leading the charge or do you think it will be fool’s gold trying to change. I would appreciate your thoughts.

Barry, Global Marketing Director – Automation Hardware at GE's Intelligent Platforms business, passionately believes that connected machines, mobile data analytics and workforce enablement don’t have to be hurdles in business today. He leads the strategic direction of the company’s automation and information systems programs to help customers apply the power of the Industrial Internet to their businesses. By connecting machines, data, insights, and people, our technology solutions deliver critical insight for greater operational efficiency, effectiveness and optimization. Learn more about how Barry works at GE on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter at @BarryLynchGE.

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